Lemhi County Fair & Salmon Stampede

Fair week on Fairgrounds Road

On the last Saturday of the Lemhi County Fair, the 4-H and FFA Junior Livestock Sale opens at ten in the morning in the Livestock Barn. Two and a half hours later the beef cook-off starts at the pavilion. That evening the calves and steers come into the arena, and at seven the Salmon Stampede PRCA Rodeo begins. The fairgrounds sit on Fairgrounds Road at Salmon, where the Lemhi and Salmon Rivers converge. The Stampede’s own history page calls Salmon “the most geographically isolated community in the continental United States,” surrounded by millions of acres of roadless wilderness.

The 2026 fair ran August 22 through 29. It opened with the 4-H and FFA horse show and then the open horse show in the arena. Early in the week, exhibitors carried their entries into the Green Building: art, crafts, needlework, photography, quilts and home preserving. The swine, sheep, goats and beef crossed the scales to be weighed in. On Wednesday the market swine show began at eight in the Livestock Barn, and the Rancher Round-Up opened in the arena. At three o’clock pies were brought to the Green Building for the contest, and they were judged at four. The poultry show followed. Family Fun Night ran from six to eight.

The Dreamland Carnival set up Wednesday through Saturday. Rabbits, market beef, and breeding beef and dairy cattle went before the judges on Thursday. On Friday morning the Green Building offered pressure canner gauge testing. The 4-H public speaking contest came at two, and the small-animal and large-animal round robins followed in the barn. The fair closed Saturday with the awards, the sale, and a 4-H quiz bowl.

Three nights in the arena

The ranch rodeo is generally held on Thursday. In 2026 it began at one in the afternoon with team roping, team doctoring and team branding. It resumed at seven with stock saddle bronc riding and trailer loading. The rodeo committee added a third night in 2026, a rough-stock performance of only bulls, bareback and saddle bronc riding, run alongside the ranch rodeo. Scott Kesl of the committee said it “will give PRCA contestants one more night and is worth their time to be here.” The morning after the Thursday show, the Stampede wrote that anyone who missed it had “missed some AMAZING rough stock action.” It promised “two more days of buckin’ and kickin’ and Stampedin’” and a pre-show at 6:15.

Friday and Saturday have long been the PRCA nights. Children ride sheep in the Kid’s Mutton Bustin’ at 6:30 on Friday, and calves and steers at the same hour on Saturday, before the main performance. Will Rasmussen, whom the Stampede calls “one of our own,” announces from the stand. J.D. Hamaker of Summit Rodeo brings the stock. Cody Kroul of the committee says Hamaker “has some of the best stock in the country that can accommodate the best cowboys in the world.” A Saturday ticket also covers the concert held in the arena after the rodeo. Cody Kroul said the concert in 2026 was headlined by Glenn Templeton, a country music star. On the Friday and Saturday of 2026, a rodeo shuttle carried people home.

The week’s first public gathering is a pancake breakfast downtown. Kim Kesl, a committee member, said it was added two years before the 2026 rodeo at Jim Martiny’s suggestion. She said the proceeds go to local Search and Rescue and that Saveway, the main grocery in Salmon, donates half the food. “This is the big event prior to the rodeo, when people are first showing up,” she said. Emily Kroul and Kortni Lufkin sell a line of clothing there. The Stampede’s notice for the 2026 breakfast placed it at the Salmon EMT building, with “hot pancakes and sausage, coffee and more,” and said it supported the Stampede and local EMTs. That year also brought the first Pancake Pull, a tug of war between first-responder teams at nine in the morning at Veterans Park.

Much of the work is unpaid. According to the Post Register, many people shut down their ranch work or take a week off for the two weeks of the fair. Cody Kroul calls them “the boots-on-the-ground.”

Sewing clubs in Gibbonsville, Leadore and Iron Creek

The fair is older than its rodeo records. Elizabeth McDonald Reed was Superintendent of Public Instruction and is credited with organizing the first 4-H clubs in Idaho. They were sewing clubs at Gibbonsville, Leadore and Iron Creek, all in Lemhi County. At the end of the summer their members displayed their project work, along with fruits and vegetables, at what was the first Lemhi County Fair. In 2012 the fair and Idaho 4-H celebrated their 100th anniversary together under the theme “It All Started Here.” Lemhi County is also credited with Idaho’s first horse 4-H club, the Five H’s, the fifth H standing for horses. Reed was inducted into the Idaho 4-H Hall of Fame in 2002.

From the old fairgrounds to the PRCA

The present grounds came from a trade with Lavan and Pat Hunsaker. They offered ranch acreage north of Salmon in return for construction work on their property. On that ground the Lemhi County Fair Board built a racetrack, a covered grandstand, an indoor arena, boxstalls and display buildings. Scott Kesl puts the move from the old fairgrounds at about 1980.

Kesl does not know when the Stampede started. “As long as I’ve known it, the Stampede was a pro-rodeo at the old fairgrounds,” he said. Reg Kesler brought the rough stock there and was, in Kesl’s words, “a top-notch stock contractor and rodeo producer for almost half a century.” In those years the bronc rides were held on Sunday. During the 1980s the Fair Board joined the Eastern Idaho Rodeo Association for about ten years. The rodeo returned to the PRCA in about 1991 and has stayed there since. Ike Sankey became stock contractor, and Kesl judged the rodeo that first year back. In time the board formed a separate committee to run the rodeo. Kim Kesl names its first members as Scott Kesl, herself, Kortni Lufkin, Jim Martiny and Ted O’Neill. About two years later Scott Kesl recruited Cody and Emily Kroul.

Cody Kroul had spent several years as a professional rodeo cowboy. He and Emily moved back to Salmon just before COVID. “This little rodeo was dying because we didn’t have much added money and were not getting enough contestants,” he said. The rodeo was adding about $1,100 per event, which he called “the bare minimum to continue to be a PRCA rodeo.” In the pandemic season only half the usual rodeos were held, and he told the Fair Board that NFR qualifiers and world champions would have to come to Salmon. He offered to raise the money. Within a few days the community added another $16,000, bringing each purse to $3,000.

Money then went into the grounds. The county paid for new bathrooms. The committee put up VIP boxes and a new announcer’s stand, rebuilt the arena, set new pipe fence, and hauled in better dirt. In 2025, after many years without one, the rodeo queen contest was reinstated. Cody Kroul says he has been to nearly every rodeo in the country. “They might have a nicer arena, but they don’t have this view behind their arena.”